Man Pleads Guilty to Deceiving 8 Banks Into Distributing S$424M in Loans With 3 Accomplices

For some reason, 61-year-old men seem to be making the news today.

Well, at least the man involved in this case isn’t wanted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

What he did was still pretty bad though.

Man Pleads Guilty to Deceiving 8 Banks Into Distributing S$424M in Loans With 3 Accomplices

On Monday (April 26), Ong Ah Huat, 61, former chief financial officer (CFO) of a crude oil products supplier, pleaded guilty to working with three alleged accomplices in cheating eight banks into distributing around US$320 million (S$424 million) in loans.

According to prosecutors, the fraud had caused China Merchant Bank Singapore to incur losses of around US$10 million (S$13 million). 

The other seven banks implicated in the fraud are in Hong Kong, and they include Standard Chartered Bank (Hong Kong) and OCBC Limited (Hong Kong). 

Ong used to work for Coastal Oil (Singapore) and earned S$15,100 a month. He had received benefits amounting to around S$325,000 in total. 

Coastal Oil has since entered liquidation.

He has pleaded guilty to 15 charges, including three counts of being involved in conspiracy to cheat and nine counts of committing forgery for the purpose of cheating. During sentencing, 43 other charges will be taken into account. 

Ong’s alleged accomplices were his colleagues at the company. 

One of them is Huang Peishi, 35, former treasury manager of the company. The case against Huang is currently pending. 

The other two, Tan Sing Hwa and Carol Zong, fled Singapore before the Commercial Affairs Department (CAD) had begun investigating the offences. 

According to Deputy Public Prosecutors Thiagesh Sukumaran and Dhiraj Chainani, Ong joined Coastal Oil in May 2016 as CFO. 

 He discovered that the company was dealing with serious cash flow problems and was not making enough income to sustain the business. 

Ong found out that Tan, who was a co-director at the firm, had come up with a plan to access credit in order to solve the company’s financial problems. 

This plan involved the forging of documents. 

Ong agreed to continue with the scheme. Forged items included sale and purchase contracts, along with tax invoices. 

Between June 2017 and December 2018, Ong and his colleagues were involved in a conspiracy to cheat China Merchant Bank Singapore and the seven other Hong Kong banks.

The acting managing director of one of Coastal Oil’s trading partners, Sinfeng Marine, made a police report on 7 January 2019, which shed light on the offences that had been ongoing. 

He had informed the police of the cases of forgery which forged documents had bore Sinfeng’s company and contract seals, along with signatures of Sinfeng’s representatives. 

Ong will be sentenced on 3 May—he is now out on bail of S$100,000. 

An offender can face imprisonment of up to 10 years and fined for each count of cheating. 

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